After several years in the wilderness, two British films are in the frame for the film world's most prestigious award - the Palme d'Or.

Ken Loach's The Wind that Shakes the Barley, set during the Irish civil war, has been selected for the main competition in the Cannes film festival.

Loach's films have been selected for competition before, but he has never yet won the Palme. The Wind that Shakes the Barley, starring Cillian Murphy and Liam Cunningham, is about two brothers who fought together in the Irish war of independence, but end up on opposing sides in the ensuing civil war.

Red Road, British director Andrea Arnold's full-length debut, will also join the line-up in the main competition - an unusual honour for a first feature. Arnold has already won an Oscar for her short film Wasp (2003).

The eagerly anticipated Marie-Antoinette, Sofia Coppola's adaptation of Antonia Fraser's biography, will be one of the most talked-about films in competition, particularly given the success of the director's breakthrough film, Lost in Translation.

European cinema is strongly represented, with Pedro Almodóvar's latest film, Volver. It stars Penélope Cruz as a bereaved daughter whose ghostly mother returns to fix the problems she failed to resolve in her lifetime.

There are four French films in the line-up of 19, and two Italian offerings - including Nanni Moretti's Caiman, a satirical portrait of outgoing Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Two Mexican directors with films in the selection are: Guillermo del Toro, with Pan's Labyrinth, and Alejandro González Iñárritu, with Babel.

Mainstream Hollywood will be represented at Cannes by the world premiere of The Da Vinci Code, directed by Ron Howard, which is screened on May 17.